Journal Article

Given that terrorism is omnipresent on social media, it is imperative to study how seeing terror content online is related to individuals’ attitudes, behaviors, and emotions. This study investigates how exposure to terrorism on social media associates with terror-related online self-disclosure and how self-disclosure, in turn, relates to fear of terrorism. A quota-based survey of ...

Unlike one-to-one threats, terrorist threat texts constitute a form of violence and a language crime that is committed in a complex context of public intimidation, and are communicated publicly and designed strategically to force desired sociopolitical changes . Contributing to law enforcement and threat assessors’ fuller understanding of the discursive nature of threat texts in ...

Incels (“involuntary celibates”) are online communities of young men, broadly aligned by anti-feminism, concern over an inability to form sexual relationships with women, and a strong negative focus on their own appearance. Incels have been linked to violent misogyny and several mass killings. Using critical discourse analysis on data from nine different incel online forums, ...

Radical/extremist Islamist actors use social media to disseminate uncompromising stories of monist religious political orders and identities. As a reaction, counter-movements to online Islamist radicalism/extremism emerged in Western societies (and beyond), while uncertainty about effective outcomes remains widespread. In a bid to understand how inclusionary and exclusionary discursive spaces are created, we ask: How do ...

This study examines the impact of players’ gender and nationality on game performance before and during the Israel-Hamas war. The study focuses on two games for social impact revolving around intractable conflicts: PeaceMaker (Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and Fact Finders (Cyprus Conflict). We conducted three case studies with 510 undergraduates voluntarily playing the aforementioned games and reporting ...

The so-called Islamic State (IS) has always had a strong online presence. The purpose of most IS propaganda is to shape perceptions and polarise the support of their audience, but there are also other forms of communication from the group and its supporters. In this paper, we present an analysis of the content from two ...

Numerous studies have reported an increase in hate speech on X (formerly Twitter) in the months immediately following Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform on October 27th, 2022; relatedly, despite Musk’s pledge to “defeat the spam bots,” a recent study reported no substantial change in the concentration of inauthentic accounts. However, it is not known ...

This paper investigates one sub-topic within a right-wing extremist (RWE) movement in India – love jihad, a conspiracy created by Hindutva nationalists alleging that Muslims forcefully convert Hindu women to Islam with allurements of love. Love jihad narratives and digital dissemination tactics serve a nation-building, patriarchal and vote-seeking function for the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party ...

The exploitation of social media platforms by terrorist threat networks (TTNs) represents a critical challenge to national security that traditional counterterrorism frameworks struggle to address. This study examines how military information support operations (MISO) can be strategically leveraged to counter TTNs’ exploitation of these platforms for radicalization, recruitment, and operational planning. Through analysis of operational ...

Online platforms have banned (“deplatformed”) influencers, communities, and even entire websites to reduce content deemed harmful. Deplatformed users often migrate to alternative platforms, which raises concerns about the effectiveness of deplatforming. Here, we study the deplatforming of Parler, a fringe social media platform, between 2021 January 11 and 2021 February 25, in the aftermath of ...